Idk this blog’s position on this, but I feel like the handwringing around gay headcanons has gotten really out of hand. It's becoming more and more common for people to assert that women who have ever expressed any interest in a man shouldn't be headcanoned as gay. I know that the arguments against lesbian headcanons started out as a reaction to fandoms policing bi headcanons, and don't get me wrong, the biphobia needs to be addressed, but “you’ve been with men so you’re not really a lesbian” is just as much a homophobic talking point as “you’ve never been with a man so you must really be gay and not bi” is a biphobic talking point. It's literally gold star lesbian shit, and with that kind of rhetoric already on the rise, I don't think it's helping anyone to try to prevent people from exploring those experiences in fandom.
The answer is always "explore it with a woman who isn't attracted to men," but no one wants to acknowledge that those characters just don't exist in a lot of fandoms, and even when they do, not everyone will relate to the one character who's considered acceptable to headcanon as gay. I just don't see how effectively hanging a No Gay Headcanons Allowed sign on the door of a fandom isn't homophobic, regardless of someone's reason for doing it. I’m focusing on gay headcanons here but I have to assume this impacts aspec fans with ace/aro/aroace headcanons too, since the idea that a character's canon attraction to men should always be preserved in headcanons is just as applicable to them.
People will emphasize that the character's attraction was meant to be genuine, but these are headcanons. They're meant to be alternative interpretations. The lack of attraction to women is also meant to be genuine, but if someone started using that to claim that gay and bi headcanons for a canonically straight character were aphobic, no one would give them the time of day. Not to mention that weaponizing the heteronormativity still pervasive in media against gay people wanting to see themselves in a character seems really homophobic.
So I agree with you on some points like in the past its definitely been biphobia that keeps people from declaring their faves bi. The rest? is too general to be made universal in my experience.
Like ok what might work in some fandoms say LOK might not work in other fandoms. In LOK the endgame couple are two bi women Korrasami. I have never finished LOK but I know enough through osmosis of the fandom to know that they are endgame and yet year after year we get lots of "lesbian" compilations that include them.
And like personally to me its only been the past few years like during the pandemic really where there's been more bi rep. Like bi boy rep really only came out in Heartstopper and now that's been cancelled. Before bi rep was only women.
And from what I can see in media (I'm a huge Shuriri fan for example) very few female characters are allowed to just be safely headcanoned as sapphic. Like ok Shuri doesn't have any canon male love interests and I feel like because she doesn't and the only potential one in canon is Namor Shuriri is very accepted in our little niche. But again I only see woc shipping Shuriri. I never see white women celebrating Shuriri or the fact that Riri Williams seems to be implied bisexual. (that one moment her mom asks if she has a girl or a boy in her room is canon you can't take that from me!!!!). Now I haven't finished Ironheart but I know that there's great potential for shipping Natalie/Riri too! But fandom again seems to favor shipping Riri with men in the show. And that could just be the misogynoir rearing its ugly head. Like why isn't the mcu fandom gathering around Shuriri to ship these two beautiful scientists like they did the original science bros tony/bruce?
another example: In the wednesday show fandom there's loads of wednesday/enid shippers and people calling them lesbians even though both girls are canonically into boys. This one feels very blatantly like bi erasure to me specifically because I feel like the best moments were between enid/ wednesday and wednesday/bianca. But again you rarely see anyone shipping Wednesday with Bianca because Bianca is black and mostly ignoring Bianca in general.
tldr: imo there's loads of lesbophobia and biphobia in fandom but what really angers me is the fact that most of the time the shipping dynamics are dictated by colorism and misogynoir.
also: this is an excellent time to plug a side project @criticalfanweek where we're trying to get mods for the next celebration to plan and come up with prompts.
